Chapter 45 #2
One prisoner stopped beside Saundyl. Another turned from the rift and joined him. The wounded who could still stand tightened their grips on salvaged weapons while Daeryn’s people filled the gaps between them.
A battle line took shape where the river had thrown them. Essence kindled in scattered bursts, gathering into a constellation along the shore.
Lykor looked from the open portal to the bodies closing ranks beside him.
The star-blind fools were staying.
Across the river, Blossom dragged another island into place. Stone and root closed the last gap to the northern bank, completing the bridge. More wreckage followed, broadening the span as Galaeryn’s army converged on the crossing by the thousands.
If they insisted on dying here, he could at least make the army earn every corpse. Lykor stalked up to Skylash.
“Provoking the wounded dragon might be unwise,” Aesar said.
Lykor ignored him.
“Are you planning to lie there while they cross?” he demanded. “Or do you have any lightning to arm us with?”
Skylash lifted her head toward the ragged collection of bodies who’d chosen the losing side.
“Death is all that’s left for you here,” she hissed.
“I didn’t ask for a useless prophecy.” Lykor bared his fangs at her. “If you’re staying, lend the shamans your lightning. Or lie on your belly and scorch whatever reaches this shore.” He pointed toward the portal still open behind them. “Unless you can slither through so we can leave.”
Skylash’s growl rolled through the mud. A spark lashed from her nostrils close enough to scour the frost from his forearms.
Lightning uncoiled from her jaws. The charge forked through the air, splitting again and again until dozens of crackling spheres hung around her. Violet sparks skittered across the bank as the orbs drifted toward those whose shaman blood could wield her element.
The line flinched, some stepping back.
Saundyl reached first. His fingers plunged into the nearest sphere, and the charge raced up his arm, coiling around his shoulders. His jaw locked as he wrestled the borrowed lightning under control and drew it around his fists.
“Forty-three,” Aesar counted as the shamans followed Saundyl’s lead, violet lightning flickering along the shore.
Forty-three bodies sinking into the mud, stubborn enough to stand in the path of an army. The soldiers already crossing outnumbered them a hundred to one, with thousands more massed behind.
Lykor snapped the portal shut and spread the ragged line across the bridge’s mouth, where drowned stone ground into the northern shore. Galaeryn’s first ranks would come straight through lightning and Essence.
The last orbs dimmed as the shamans claimed them. Skylash remained sprawled in the mud, her gaze pinned on the advancing army.
She struck before the first boots hit the shore.
Lightning scythed from her throat across the packed bridge. Elven plate flashed white. Flesh cooked inside armor as the blast flung bodies backward into the ranks or sent them spinning off the sides.
Humans and elves burned together. Leather smoked. Metal buckles spat sparks, weapons passing the charge from hand to hand until soldiers dropped twitching at the feet of those still being driven forward.
“Target the elves,” Lykor snarled, ice and shadow sheathing his fists as he paced the line.
Humans gave Galaeryn numbers, but the elves carried enough Essence to end this pathetic defense before the first blades ever reached them.
Blossom remained half-submerged in the water, roots sunk through the islands she’d chained together.
The army’s leading ranks reached the northern shore.
Aesar went still as Skylash’s lightning ripped through them again.
Saundyl’s shamans struck behind her, untrained hands flinging their borrowed lightning across the narrow distance. Elven officers vanished inside the charge, shields half-formed, Essence still gathering as the storm lanced through them.
Soldiers packed the crossing shoulder to shoulder with nowhere to run. Thousands kept advancing, crushing the foremost against Lykor’s line until bodies spilled sideways into the water.
Lykor seized the river the instant soldiers toppled from the bridge. The current yanked them under, flooding open mouths before they could surface.
Those who fought their way onto shore found Lykor waiting. He turned the blood in their veins to ice, killing them before their blades finished rising.
One soldier broke through the front rank. Lykor punched him flat with a spear of frost, and those surging behind trampled him before he finished dying.
They held the shore for a handful of vicious minutes. Longer than Lykor had expected.
Lightning, ice, shadow, and force raised the dead into a barricade, yet still the living climbed over them.
Then another island came down beyond the edge of Lykor’s line.
Blossom’s roots wrenched the fallen isle into the bridge, extending it farther along the bank.
Stone ground against shore and Galaeryn’s soldiers flooded into the opening.
The forty-three fools who’d stayed spread thinner across a shore that kept widening as Essence and steel spilled past their exposed flank.
Prismatic light cleaved the sky.
Three figures dropped through it and struck the shore hard enough to fling mud across the line.
Lykor stared at them. Relief cracked through his ribs before he could crush it. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Serenna’s wings vanished as she straightened. One look at Skylash sent her running, mending light already blazing in her palms. The Stormstrike bared her fangs, but Serenna didn’t slow.
Lykor drove a lance of ice through an officer’s chest. Vesryn’s shadows erupted the next. Fenn’s fire rolled over a knot of soldiers and left the air stinking of charred flesh.
Lykor had watched them fly toward Rimeclaw with a Heart of Stars. Now all three stood on his shore.
His attention cut skyward.
The Aetherveil chain drifted above him in shattered tiers, islands shrouded in mist, roots dangling from broken stone while waterfalls poured into open air. He searched for the sweep of Rimeclaw’s wings, yet every gap only revealed another stretch of empty sky.
His gaze dropped to Vesryn.
The prince shook his head. Fire burst from his wing claws and slammed into an officer halfway down the bridge, hurling him burning into the river.
“The king had another Heart. Used it on Veyrix and flew south with both dragons.”
Ice crackled over Lykor’s knuckles, the cold sinking inward until even hope felt frozen solid in his gut.
Rimeclaw still chained. Veyrix taken. Blossom building the army a road while Skylash bled in the mud.
They had nothing left to win with. Nothing left except time, each minute only delaying their inevitable defeat.
Another crush of soldiers rushed across the bridge.
Skylash hammered them back with lightning while Lykor sent ice screaming behind, his shadows lashing through the gaps to obliterate whatever was left standing.
“Where’s Jassyn?” he snapped between strikes.
Vesryn fell in beside him, shadows writhing from his fists. Fenn took the other side in a whirl of fire.
“Above,” Vesryn said. “He seized the razorwing swarm. Last we saw, he was catching people falling from the islands.”
As usual, he was still spending himself on everyone else, because apparently Jassyn had never learned when enough was enough.
Fenn’s eyes flared on the lightning crawling over the shamans’ fists and forearms. His mouth curved, fangs flashing before fire swelled around his claws.
He sent a line of flaming spheres skimming low across the shore, heat steaming the mud in their wake before they settled among the shamans.
Lightning hissed toward the fire. The two elements circled each other like predators forced to share a kill.
Saundyl raised his hand, and the nearest flame leapt into his palm. Fire climbed his arm as the others followed, Cinderax’s gift joining the lightning already sparking across their skin.
Fire and lightning turned the widened bridge into a killing ground. Galaeryn’s soldiers died faster than the ranks behind could climb over them.
Blossom loomed beyond the carnage. One command could turn that monstrous strength on Lykor’s little defense and bury the entire line in the earth. For now, the elf controlling her kept her power sunk into the road across the river.
Pressure warped the air behind Lykor.
A portal split open beside Skylash, inches from where Serenna stood with both hands pressed to the dragon’s limp wing. A sword punched through before the rift finished widening.
Lykor’s curse didn’t have time to fly from his teeth as Aesar seized their hands.